Track record of anti-poverty 'Enterprise
Zones' is mixed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.
— Since Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, attempts
to alleviate poverty have shifted away from urban renewal and centralized
government planning to so-called "market-based solutions."

These efforts include Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities,
programs that seek to lift families out of poverty through market expansion.
As part of these programs, tax credits are given to businesses that
create jobs and spur development in designated low-income areas.

But the verdict on these programs is decidedly mixed. "Although
economic growth has occurred within the targeted areas, the beneficiaries
of these initiatives have largely been private businesses and investors
who have taken advantage of the tax incentives offered," Jennifer
Forbes, a law student at the University
of Illinois, concluded.

The idea of enterprise zones originated in England in 1979 under Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, Forbes wrote in the latest issue of the
University of Illinois Law Review. Modeled after free-trade districts
in Hong Kong, the zones were designed to lure large and mid-sized corporations
into abandoned industrial and mining areas. Despite tax breaks and eased
restrictions on land use, few industries took up the government’s
offer, and the program was considered a failure.

The ideological underpinnings of tax credits nevertheless made their
way to the U.S., championed by the Reagan administration and former
Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp. While Congress balked at creating so-called
"EZs" during the 1980s, nearly all state governments implemented
some form of low-tax zones for depressed urban and rural areas.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots prompted the federal government’s entry
into the enterprise business. Generous tax incentives, which could be
deducted from corporate-tax bills, were offered to businesses that located
or expanded in designated zones and hired "qualified zone employees."

Examining the record of EZs in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia,
Forbes reported that only the Baltimore program generated positive economic
growth. Between 1993 and 2003, the zone posted a 108 percent increase
in the number of local residents employed and a 158 percent rise in
the number of locally run businesses.

"In spite of the noteworthy successes in Baltimore, it is still
unclear whether the progress is sustainable," the article stated.
Only half of the residents who were in job-training programs sponsored
as part of the program were still working two years after the legislation
creating nine national EZs and 95 ECs (Enterprise Communities) expired
in 2003.

Moreover, the growth rates within Baltimore’s EZ were uneven.
In the southeast part of the city – largely white and already
undergoing gentrification – private investment totaled $400 million,
while only $50 million in private capital was recorded in black West
Baltimore. Whole blocks of the latter were still boarded-up and derelict
when the program ended.

President Bill Clinton signed the latest national effort, known as the
Community Renewal Tax Relief Act, into law on Dec. 21, 2000. So far,
the program has offered $15 billion in tax credits to private Community
Development Entities (CDEs) certified by the Treasury Department as
providing "capital or technical assistance to disadvantaged businesses
or communities."

Investors often have combined these tax credits with historic-district
tax credits because many U.S. historic districts are located in impoverished
inner-city census tracts.

Many awards, for example, have been granted to the National Trust Community
Investment Corp., a for-profit subsidiary of the National Trust for
Historic Preservation, and to groups restoring abandoned buildings,
such as $767,000 for the Dia Beacon Art Museum near Beacon, N.Y., and
$9 million to rehabilitate the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore.

Forbes faulted the program’s bias toward historic preservation
at the expense of offering low-income families opportunities to improve
their job skills and establish their own businesses.

"Residents of inner-city neighborhoods live in isolated enclaves
delimited by a history of residential segregation, federally sponsored
mortgage red-lining, racially disparate zoning practices and spatially
concentrated public housing," the article noted.

"By using low-income census tracts as boundaries to target tax
incentives, the NMTC programs reinforce this spatial isolation without
challenging the underlying structure that creates these boundaries.
Driven by capital investment and the goals of economic development,
the programs fail to promote the social change necessary to support
sustainable communities."

NMTC-subsidized projects could be structured to create financial incentives
for investors to improve the "human capital" of poor families.
For example, projects that offered job training or child care to residents
could receive more tax credits. "This would result in a greater
return for the investor, and residents will become invested in a project
if they can see how it will eventually benefit them," Forbes argued.

She pointed to studies showing that minority-owned businesses are more
likely to hire minority residents than non-minority businesses. But
unless a minority-owned company is located in a designated low-income
census tract, it is not eligible for NMTCs, even if it employs minorities
from the census tract.

Her article is titled, "Using Economic Development Programs as
Tools for Urban Revitalization: A Comparison of Empowerment Zones and
New Markets Tax Credits."